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The Coalition to Regulate Marijuana like Alcohol is a group currently working to get a citizen initiative on Ohio’s November ballot. The initiative would legalize and regulate the growth and distribution of marijuana in the state of Ohio. This would apply just to people 21 years old and up, just like alcohol.

When initially submitting the initiative, the coalition was short in the number of signatures they needed to get to the ballot. They then submitted an additional set of signatures after the fact that was almost ten times the amount they had been missing. It is now expected that the initiative will make it to the ballot.

The thing with citizens’ initiatives is that they do not affect state constitutions. This means the recent attempt to make state constitution amendments harder to pass (that had failed anyway) would not have affected the initiative. However, something else that will be featured on the ballot that will likely have an effect on the outcome of the initiative is another bill affecting abortion rights.

A bill regarding the implementation of reproductive rights and access to safe abortions and contraception into the state’s constitution is set to be on the November ballot.

This bill being featured alongside the marijuana citizen initiative is massively significant in how the initiative will turn out, as the reproductive rights bill is expected to largely drive people to the polls. With this, they also expect that most issues will have similar alignment, meaning those that support the abortion bill will support the marijuana initiative and those who oppose the abortion bill will oppose the marijuana initiative. Given this, many are expecting most opposition efforts to be directed toward the abortion bill. This gives the marijuana initiative a higher likelihood of passing.

If the marijuana initiative does pass, then 21+ years old Ohio residents will legally be able to grow their own marijuana plants. There will just be certain requirements that they must follow. For example, they will only be allowed 6 plants per person, with a 12 plant maximum for a residence.

If this initiative passes in Ohio, they would become the 24^th state to legalize the recreational use of marijuana.

The Coalition feels confident in the initiative passing. A spokesperson from the Coalition said they feel that the initiative would pass on any ballot in any election.